A Writer Friend indeed!

Today I have a guest blog spot on my friend Trish’s blog, A Novel Friend. Trish is a writer who has most notably a story in the award-winning collection Bad-A$$ Faeries: Just Plain Bad.  She writes regularly for several magazines and she is a tutor-extraordinaire for Smarthinking.com.  She is a great writer friend to have because she knows exactly when to push me with my writing and just when to let me be and hang back.

Last year we co-authored a short story that has yet to find placement, but it was a terrific experience for me.

Every writer has not only his or her own style, but also his or her own inner life that leads them to write in the first place.  The meshing of two worlds, I learned, can have some interesting results.  Our story was a mixture of fantasy, which is Trish’s specialty, and the mundane, which is more my speed.  We negotiated issues of form, character, detail and direction.  We had to talk through the editing process and figure out what sentences we could easily alter and which ones we needed to hang on to.  I learned about putting aside my ego when Trish edited my parts of scenes – she was looking at my work with her critical eye, not at me!

The best part, though, was learning how to craft the story in a way that was pleasing to both of us.  The details of the story became less and less important as we looked at the bigger picture of how we wanted her two characters to interact with my two characters.

I learned things about myself as a writer, too.  I learned that I do have the tough skin that I have been working to cultivate.  I learned that I am sometimes to wordy and descriptive when fewer, well-chosen words would be easier for the story to support.  And I learned that I like co-authoring.  Talking through the story with a friend who is as invested in the work as I am was a unique experience.

So thanks, Trish, for being a friend and co-writer.  I look forward to doing it again!